In a recent interview with Fars News Agency, Iran’s state-controlled media, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi questioned the authenticity and reliability of President Obama’s recent announcement that Osama bin Laden has been killed.

Mr. Vahidi is no run-of-the-mill military bureaucrat. A known terrorist, he has spent years on Interpol’s most wanted list for the 1994 Jewish community center bombing in Buenos Aires that killed 85 and injured hundreds.

“Bin Laden’s death report,” he told reporters after a Wednesday cabinet meeting in Tehran, “is suspicious in essence, since they claim that they have discharged his body in the sea.”

Vahidi leveraged his calculated skepticism into a broader attack on U.S. credibility. “We should ask why they have not allowed an impartial party to observe this process,” he said.

Vahidi took pains to point out that if bin Laden’s death announcement is in fact true, then it would leave no more justification for the United States’ continued military presence in the region — as if al-Qaeda’s remaining leadership is of no significance.

In fact, Vahidi himself, while serving as chief commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, established a close relationship with al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Working with Zawahiri, Vahidi forged ties with al-Qaeda and engineered several attacks against U.S. interests in the Middle East.

Now, as the mullahs’ defense minister, Vahidi is directly responsible for the Iranian nuclear bomb and missile programs. What’s more, he is also in charge of the proliferation of arms to Syria, Venezuela, and terrorist organizations including Hezbollah and Hamas.

In reference to Bin Laden’s burial at sea, the lack of “impartial” observers, and the supposed lack of justification for American military involvement in Iran’s neighborhood, Ahmad Vahidi summed up his nation’s attitude as follows: “All these issues display that Americans are troubled in dealing with their strategic issues.”

With U.S. soldiers opposite both Iran’s borders and a stubborn reform movement within, Vahidi is certainly one to talk.

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the author of the award winning book, A Time to Betray. He serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI).

Click here to view the 11 legacy comments

Click here to hide legacy comments

11 Comments, 10 Threads

Mr. Vahidi looks and talks like a wino who lives in a cardboard box. The fact that such a man is the defense minister of an Islamic state tells you all you need to know about the intellectual space muslims inhabit.

I’m surprised Iran doesn’t issue statements about the Roswell incident and cheese in a can.

Anyone who is familiar with Bizarro from Superman comics then understands the entire civilization of Iran from it’s copycat Leggo architecture to it’s children-who-killed-their-parents version of a gov’t.

I really think we’re mesmerized by the fact that they have things like microphones and cars and mimic human beings. The true fact is that without the West they’d be living in tents among oil bubbling out of the ground they have their slaves from Africa scoop up and put in lamps.

Every thing they do and say screams monkey-in-a-tuxedo. The fact that the Iranian people put up with it even with access to global cable TV that shows how to copycat not being a dumb moron who is a slave to a hateful god demonstrates that you deserve what you won’t die to fight. Evidently training an organ grinder’s monkey to climb up buildings and install satellite dishes isn’t the same thing as building an organ grinder from scratch.

As far as I am concerned, the word Islam is synonymous with the term “endless bitching”.

The report on the Mahdi Movie seemed too wierd to be true (like most stuff coming from Iran) but apparently it is a very big deal:
An Iranian cleric and presidential aide has been detained for backing a film about a key figure in the Shiite Muslim faith, state media reported.

I dont really get it and generally dont when it comes to Iran. It is like a sci fi story where conflict is inevitable because the humans and aliens have no means of communication or understanding each other.

I dont know how things will play out in Syria in the short run but events show that the Iran-Syria-Lebanon axis is highly unstable. Im not too worried about their contacts with Egypt either.

With the changes happening in the ME picking fights with Israel carries less and less value and that trend is likely to continue. In the long run Hezbollas ‘resistance’ against an enemy no longer in Lebanon and quite happy to stay nicely on their side of the border leaves it without a genuine raison d’etre. Syrian people will not forget which way the barrels of their tanks are currently pointed nor the lack of support they recieved from the Palestinians.

If the US had a stronger policy and could keep the Chinese out of Iran the whole house of cards through to Lebanon could collapse.

You state that he is “a known terrorist”, yet you refer to him as if he is part of Iranian culture and society. You constantly use “Iran” in your articles to describe activities of Ayatollahs and their terrorists. Why?

Associating Ayatollahs in the same context as Iran, is akin to describing Nazis in the context as Germans.

In the context of WWII it is perfectly acceptable to refer to “German” soldiers or “nazis” interchangeably. Same thing in Iran currently. English speakers know what segment you mean when you refer to the “Iranians” or “Germans” by context.

Vahidi is both a terrorist and a part of Iranian culture and society. From whence came the Ayatollas, the moon? It is notneccessary to specify that there are good and bad. We know that.

I, too, doubt Bin Laden is dead, although for entirely different reasons. I *want* the SOB dead, I just don’t believe anything Obama says and we have only his word that things went down as described. Consider:

1) Obama is allegedly a Harvard trained lawyer. He is in charge of prosecuting the most sensational trial in history.

2) As soon as it was physically possible he ordered the destruction of the evidence in the case. Lawyers (real ones, anyway) don’t DO that… unless there is a reason. “Muslim sensitivities” was only the excuse. What was the REASON?

3) He is presently suppressing photographic evidence. Why? To give the CIA time to convincingly photoshop it?

4) The order to destroy evidence in a criminal case CAN’T be a legal order, yet the Navy carried it out. Therefore, the Navy’s credibility is now zero as Obama’s has been for the last three years.

So, what evidence (real beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence) is there for Bin Laden’s death. None. Obama *can’t* be as stupid a lawyer as this. He’s hiding something. What?

Has something in the air or water, perhaps, accomplished the wholesale retardation of our nation?
Forever anonymous “commandos” allegedly descend on a fortified position in Pakistan and shoot some ragheads, one of whom was allegedly Bin Laden. But there is NO PROOF! No body. No proven identification of the corpses. You think there was? Tell us, then, who made the identification and how. Lets ask him some questions, shall we? Where is the chain of evidence? Oh, the obamathugs have already destroyed all the evidence? And Obama always lies, so whatever he says cannot be true. Moreover, hundreds, perhaps thousands, knew we were coming for him at that location. And nobody warned him? Then what was Obamas’ purpose in informing all those Feinstein types about the raid if not to save his moslem brother?

You would not want to be convicted of a crime on “evidence” like obama offers for this silly interlude. And you couldn’t be so convicted. The brave men who were the shooters and backups have no way of knowing whether they shot osama or not. Maybe oscambo threw his moslem brother under the bus to make some political points, like the Rothschilds financed Hitler. Or maybe its just another odumbo scam. lets see the Beef!